The Longest Night

She awoke just as if she was simply resting her eyes the entire night. Instead of opening her eyes to the rising sun, she saw a sea of black and smelled faint pine. She lifted her head, momentarily forgetting where she was. Her eyes fell upon the man’s face; she lost her breath momentarily. Discovering him all over again was no less awe-inspiring as it was the day before. His features the most serene she had ever seen them. He always looked so hard, so defensive, yet in his sleep, everything was smooth, a sheet of silk. His mouth was parted slightly, his breathing even, slow.

She was about to stand and break camp, but she rested her head back on his chest again, feeling her head rise up and down with his breathing, feeling so harmonious. This was what life was supposed to be, that much she knew. Her lips briefly pulled into a smile one more time.

While lying there, she checked his wrap. A little blood stained the rag, but it needed no cleaning. She replaced his shirt and jacket, smoothing them incessantly. It was with reluctance that she left his side and began to pack the area. She layered him with blankets and newspaper. He would need it, for it would be a long day; there would be no stopping.

She broke through the trees after a few hours and came across an open field covered in a perfect sheet of snow. Where her feet plunged into the snow, the tarp smoothed it out. She cleared the field much quicker than she thought she would; she’d been so used to rationing so thinly that the granola bars she’d eaten from his bag fuelled her beyond comparison. She had to slow to manoeuvre the tarp carefully through the copse, but she pulled harder and stepped farther, feeling capable enough to take on anything. In reality, she was starving and her old injury was making her knee burn, but the euphoria that engulfed her drove her on, making everything else insignificant.

The man took in a sharp bout of breath. She stopped abruptly and looked back over her shoulder. He put a hand to his chest and turned his head slowly from left to right. Bewilderment struck and she had to consciously relax her clenched fists to let the rope drop.

She rounded the tarp. He pitched himself on his elbows and she knelt at his side. She had to swallow first before speaking. “How do you feel?”

He squinted up at her, his face clearing like clouds drifting back to unveil the sun. As he opened them more gradually, he gave her that same look as he did back on the platform two years ago. “I thought I imagined you,” he said quietly.

She let out her breath in a sharp, shaky laugh the moment he spoke. It was like granite and honey. In the four years that they stood at the LRT station, she only heard his voice on a handful of occasions. She had nearly replied, “So did I,” but held herself back, unsure of the weight her words might have. He didn’t remember her. He couldn’t. She was not a part of his life as he was hers. Not once did she approach him or make herself known to him. He showed no sign of recognizing her, anyway, not a girl from long ago who might have fallen for him. And all of those things kept her from going further, no matter how much she wanted to.

“I’m taking you back to my settlement,” she explained. “I have supplies there. I can treat that wound.”

His eyes shot down to his stomach. He touched it lightly and grimaced.

“How did that happen?” she asked uncertainly, her eyes flickering between his face and his belly.

He looked directly into her eyes, considering her. “Someone like you.”

“Like me?”

“He was alone. Afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said firmly, yet softly, shaking her head. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I know.”

She began to rock on her heels and study the ground before her, clenching and stretching her fingers. After a moment, she stood and situated the rein back on her hips. “We can make it there in a day, but we have to travel by night.”

“Is it safe?”

“It should be. Just difficult.”

They travelled in silence for a while, although questions raced through Catherine’s mind restlessly. There was so much she wanted to ask him, to know of him. Eventually, as the sun approached the horizon, she collected every last bit of courage she had and said: “You look familiar.”

There was no reply. She looked over her shoulder and saw his head hanging to the side. Unconscious. Perhaps he was never meant to hear her.

He looked well-nourished, but he must have been very sick or afflicted by his wound. Even she hadn’t fainted in the last couple of years. Maybe it was blood loss. Luckily his wound wasn’t deep, and the bleeding was slowing. There was the chance, however, that the internal damage was extensive. The thought made her pull harder.

The sun had dipped below the horizon slightly earlier than it had the day before. Before she had left the cabin, she had looked over the calendar she had etched on the wall, making sure the dates she checked off were accurate. She determined, on the day she left, that the date was December 18th. It had been three days since then, which made it December 21st. The anniversary of the earthquake and the winter solstice. The longest night of the year.

She shot a glance over her shoulder and held it there for a while. She would see the night through.

It was a cold winter day, and Catherine was ill. The doctor ordered bed rest. Most of her professors had given her resources to keep up in her studies while she was sick at home, yet there she was at the LRT station, waiting.

She stood shivering, her arms wrapped around her chest, her head hung and her mouth open, gulping up air like it was in short supply. Her head swam and she could barely stand. After minutes of standing in the cold, she staggered backward to the bench and slumped onto it. Another drove of people came down the escalators. She gripped the sides of her head to keep her brain from falling out. Without looking up, she was sure that at the very back of the crowd, he would be there.

When she glanced, she saw him before she saw anything else. He wore a scarf and a hat with his usual winter outfit, and he was such a welcome sight. She looked away quickly when he came to the bottom of the escalators. Shivers took her, and she closed her eyes to keep her world from spinning out of control.

She were so sensitive to the sound of him that everything else seemed to fade as she listened to him walk across the platform in front of her. Suddenly her concentration was shot when she heard him shuffle and say: “Are you all right?”

Her heart nearly stopped. She didn’t open her eyes right away, but if anyone saw her face, they would have said she had just been to Hell and back. She raised her head and opened her eyes.

He was talking to a woman who he had just bumped into. He touched her arms gingerly and she smiled up at him as she regained her balance. She said some words, but Catherine couldn’t hear them, or wouldn’t allow herself to. The woman walked away; the man looked over his shoulder after her. Catherine averted her gaze quickly, to avoid being discovered. It wasn’t influenza that was vicious in her chest now, clawing at her lungs. Now she knew why people called it green. It was the feel of it. She imagined herself being bumped into instead of her, invented the feel of his hands on her shoulders.

As the southbound train arrived and swallowed him whole, She rose and made for the surface world again, and despite everything, she smiled. His voice, a tonic. For the next two weeks, she arrived every morning to see him, and every day she felt better.

The sky was darkening by the minute, but she trudged through the snow relentlessly, the tarp feeling lighter and lighter as they inched closer to the cabin. The memory had her blushing. Her infatuation with him ran so deep that the sound of his voice was something she clung to for years.

“Why are you out here all by yourself?” he said, frightening her. She hesitated out of surprise, but she kept going, trying not to miss her step.

“What do you mean?”

“How did you end up out here of all places? How have you managed?”

“I was in Fort McMurray after the disaster, but I had to leave.”

She heard him shift, possibly to look back at her. “Why?”

“You don’t know? They started eating people.”

“My God.”

“Is that where you were going?”

“No. I thought it was empty, though.”

“There’s some there still. A lot of people left south. A lot more died.”

An unearthed tree loomed ahead. She wove through the bush and carefully wound around it slowly. Obstruction cleared, she asked, “Where did you come from?”

“Far away. Wood Buffalo National Park.”

“Up north?”

“Yes. There’s an entire research lab there. It was converted once the park was shut down to the public, and we were shipped up there right after. Just before the earthquakes. It was a federal project. We were all commissioned to be there for only three months. We’ve been isolated there ever since.”

“Everyone was isolated. I’m still not entirely sure how it all happened.”

There was a thoughtful pause. “It was a chain reaction, starting in Yellowstone. Massive earthquakes. Tidal waves all around the Pacific rim.”

Professor Verity was obsessed with the end of the world, about death deserving. Human self-destruction…a lot of students had dropped that class all around her. Just too ridiculous.

Atlantis. On a global scale.

“Wouldn’t the volcanoes have blown debris into the atmosphere?” she asked.

“They would have, but there were no eruptions. There was a super volcano in the national park, underground. Right where the Old Faithful geyser was. Plates there was unstable. The water main in a geothermal plant nearby broke. Water flooded the ground thousands of metres down. Then…”

“How do you know all of this?”

“It was the last contact we received from Edmonton.”

Of course she knew that it hit home. Of course she knew everyone she had ever known had died. But to hear someone say it out loud, to have it finalized in such a way…

She fought to keep her voice even. “Are there other places? Are there other people that survived?”

“I’m sure there are.”

“In a way, I hope not.”

Silence settled again while she turned it over in her mind. It was over. Even though she knew deep down that the world as she knew it was dead, part of her felt comfortable in not knowing for sure. Hope was always following her everywhere.

She suddenly stopped in her tracks. There was a peculiar weight on her chest, like she was clawing out her own cavity. She imagined a scalpel slicing lines in her heart. Tears started to roll down her face and her lower lip quivered uncontrollably. Neither of them said anything as she began to sob. A hand went to her face and she let herself fall to her knees. Cries became wails, a sound so full of depression and agony that hearing them made her crumble harder. The man reached up from the tarp and gently touched her back. When she felt his fingers brush her coat, her cries softened and slowed.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“How do you feel?”

That was what she had asked him when he first woke. This soothed her somehow. “I’m okay.”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and stood once again, fitting the rope to her hips. She pulled him along, her brow furrowed against the hurt. I will not fall now, she thought. Not when I have him here.

It had been fifteen hours since they set off, but she barely felt the fatigue. She trudged on with vigour and strength. She sighed her tears away and kept marching. It wouldn’t be far now.